There are strange people out there! They're filled with malice and evil thoughts. And some of them even have 3DS handhelds.

Advertisement

Considering how neither the 3DS nor StreetPass are exactly new, it's somewhat odd that Yomiuri Shimbun, one of Japan's biggest newspapers, would run a story on StreetPass trauma, but it did anyway after one of its writers got an email about an incident involving the feature.

According to the paper, a fifth grade girl from Osaka got a "game machine" for her birthday. She had been begging her mom for one for a while, saying that she wanted one because other kids in her class also had one. After finally getting one, she promised to only play for thirty minutes a day and to finish her homework first.

Advertisement

While Yomiuri didn't specify that it was a 3DS, the paper did mention that the game machine had a feature called "surechigai tsuushin" (すれちがい通信), which is the Japanese name for the 3DS StreetPass feature. This feature allows 3DS owners to exchange data by simply passing other individuals carrying 3DS handhelds.

Only days after getting the 3DS, she was excited to test out StreetPass for the first time. She carried the portable around Osaka City all day, wondering how many fellow 3DS owners she'd meet or if any of the people were from nearby Kyoto.

The girl crossed paths with five 3DS owners, but it was the last one that shocked both the girl and her mother: the Mii had "Die" written over and over again. This caused the girl to stop using the feature, and the mother felt like her daughter learned a lesson from the whole experience (that there are jerks out there?). The real lesson, though, should have been learning to use parental controls. Always baffled when people don't use those.

Back in March 2011, I entered a whole slew of bad words into the StreetPass Mii Avatar creator. After finishing that article, I forgot to change my Avatar and accidentally ended up walking around all day with a Mii named "Fuck You-san" made by "Fuck You". Felt awful about that. To any of the people I passed that day, sorry!